*That* is where I’m at in the spelling bee today — one ga8 down (out of three) from 👸🐝

I was reminded by a family text from a beach urchin this morning that it is my dad’s birthday. He would be 105. I didn’t exactly forget. It was on my radar screen but I didn’t post it anywhere. Not for any specific reason and I was glad to see the grandchildren remember their sweet granddaddy. He was sweeter to them than he was to me but then he lived through my teenage years. I wasn’t totally incorrigible but I was a spirited child and an angsty teen so I had my moments, which for a while included Bad Boyfriend. I did eventually land on my feet, married the right guy, and became a successful failure.

I always have a secondary thought when it’s my dad’s birthday, which is that it is also my childhood/facebook friend The Beautiful Mimi’s birthday. I wouldn’t remember that except that years ago on facebook, I posted my dad’s birthday and she commented that she always remembered that because they have matching birthdays. Why does she remember that? Who knows? It’s one of those random factoids that some people store in their memory banks for no good reason. I must have said (on her birthday at some point in our childhood), “Oh, it’s my dad’s birthday too.” I remember weird factoids too (it actually helps in my job) and I am happy to know that Mimi and I have brains that operate in a similar fashion, at least in that way. She is MUCH smarter than me overall but I love her anyway.

This is my dad (on the right) having a “shootout” with his best buddy Jim Sherman. They were probably in the woods somewhere in the area of the moomincabin and I’m sure the only shooting that was going on was whatever the photographer was doing, who was probably one of their friends in The Veteran Greenhorns “club”. These guys were in high school (I think) when the photo was taken. It was pre-WWII and as far as I know, all of the Veteran Greenhorns served. Dad was stationed stateside in the American southwest as an Army Air Corps flight instructor.

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